NHS waiting lists are continuing to lengthen, latest figures have shown, with a record 6.5 million people in England now stuck waiting anxiously for hospital treatment.
The figures from NHS England suggested one in 20 had been waiting for more than a year, with 21% of those urgently referred by their GP to see a cancer specialist in April still waiting more than a fortnight.
The numbers trying to attend accident and emergency also rocketed during May, with the month recording the second-highest number of A&E attendances at 2.2 million, second only to July 2019, when 2.3 million people went to A&E.
It was the busiest May ever for 999 calls answered (853,065) and the most urgent ambulance call outs (77,934 Category 1 calls), said NHS England.
However, NHS England has also pointed out that progress is being made in tackling the post-Covid NHS backlog.
The number of people on the waiting list for diagnostic tests has dropped, it argued, and there are two-thirds fewer people waiting more than two years for elective care.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England, said: “The new figures show our hard-working NHS staff are making significant progress in ensuring people waiting the longest time for care are getting treated.
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“There is no doubt the NHS still faces pressures – including a renewed increase in Covid patients – and the latest figures show just how important community and social care are in helping people in hospital leave when they are fit to do so, not just because it is better for patients but because it helps free up precious NHS bed space,” he added.
Separately, and potentially positively in terms of NHS pressures, more evidence has emerged that the omicron variant of Covid-19 appears less likely to cause long Covid.
A data analysis of 100,000 people by a team from King’s College, London published in The Lancet found just over 4% of those infected during the omicron wave had logged long Covid symptoms. This compared with 10% of those infected in the preceding delta wave, it said.
The research echoes figures from the Office for National Statistics in May, which suggested people double-jabbed against Covid-19 were half as likely to report long Covid symptoms following an omicron infection than if they had caught the delta variant.
The odds of reporting long Covid symptoms four to eight weeks after a first Covid-19 infection were nearly halved (49.7% lower) in infections of the omicron variant than delta variant, though critically this was only among adults who were double vaccinated when infected, it said.
